The digital world is changing rapidly, driven by new trends and algorithms. Commercial web resources have to change along with it. To achieve success online and successfully maintain an online presence, you must be able to properly update your website.

If your resource needs optimization or could use a fresh look, then you have come to the right place. In this article, we will look at the 11 stages of updating a website.

HOW TO UPDATE A WEBSITE: 11 EASY STEPS

1. Check the site for vulnerabilities

Even if you don’t plan to change your site in any way, never forget to update your security system. If you choose not to do this, you are putting your own business and all your clients at risk. Add these five must-dos to your website update checklist:

• update all software and extensions;
• install a web application firewall;
• use a strong password;
• back up your data;
• Activate SSL encryption.

2. Explore user behavior data in Google Analytics

When updating your site, it is critical to examine user behavior data in Google Analytics. They provide valuable information about how visitors interact with your property, including behavior patterns, preferences, and customer pain points.
Study your bounce and exit rates and determine which pages people are leaving most often. Analyze each of them in more detail and figure out what exactly makes people lose interest. Use the data you gather to make informed decisions about website updates that your target audience will respond to positively.

3. Run A/B tests to increase engagement

If your site attracts enough traffic to extract valuable data from the results of A/B testing, we highly recommend conducting it. Tests like these reveal vital details about how people interact with your site. They are aimed at improving conversion rate optimization.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of updating a website to increase conversion and engagement. CRO is not limited to optimizing CTAs (calls to action). A/B tests (or split tests) can also help determine whether certain colors, messaging, and page layouts increase user engagement.

Sites that attract little traffic are not able to collect as accurate data as sites with a large testing pool. However, you can still run A/B tests and test changes even if traffic is not yet high enough.

4. Monitor your competitors’ actions

Observing the actions of your competitors can give you ideas on how exactly you should update your site. Take inspiration from others to make your pages more informative, improve the user experience, simplify the checkout process, and implement other useful changes.

Compare your site to your main competitors and note anything you’re missing, such as information, specific pages, or certain features. Use tools like Semrush to find out what keywords other companies are targeting and which ones they’re ranking ahead of you for.

Use this information to update your site, whether it’s improving the design or creating high-quality content that targets specific keywords.

5. Fix bugs and update outdated content

Updating out-of-date information and correcting inaccurate information is necessary to maintain accuracy, currency, and reliability. Regularly updating your website ensures that your target audience sees relevant and authoritative content.

This way, you not only build trust between your customers and your brand but also improve your search engine rankings. Your site rises in the search results.

If you have outdated content due to certain words or dates, you can automatically find it using the Custom Search tool in the Screaming Frog utility. Efficient and efficient use of resources is a top priority for website administrators and marketers. This is why many people choose Screaming Frog with its rich functionality and flexible settings.

6. Make updates to improve SEO

Updating a website will be incomplete without SEO optimization. It’s nice to have a well-designed and functional website, but without search engine optimization, people won’t visit it.

Website updates should be aimed at meeting the SEO needs identified during the audit. Each resource has its own goals and requirements, but standard search engine optimization includes the following actions:

• redirecting broken links;
• targeting more relevant keywords;
• optimization of metadata to increase CTR (click-through rate);
• updating existing content to increase its value;
• creating fresh content for new keywords;
• adding internal links to the most valuable pages of the site;
• technical optimization to increase site speed;
• Fix critical user interface issues.

We recommend conducting a site audit to determine which SEO optimization updates need to be carried out first.

7. Conduct site quality control

Sometimes when updating a resource, all attention is focused on adding new features, while old tools are left unattended. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is your site loading too slowly?
• Does the site work correctly on different devices, regardless of screen size?
• Do the basic functions of the site work correctly?
• Have you deleted pages that were linked to other parts of the site, thereby creating a chain of redirects?
• Are social media widgets and other buttons synchronized?
• Are the videos played in good quality?
• Are all images on the site displayed correctly?

Design is an important element when updating a website, but functionality plays an equally important role. Consumers will quickly abandon you if your website is too slow or lacks easy navigation.

Regularly conduct quality checks on your site to ensure nothing is overlooked and degrades the user experience.

8. Simplify the navigation and conversion process

It is necessary to simplify the navigation and conversion process on the site for several reasons.

Firstly, it is very important to ensure that the site loads quickly. People expect immediate access to what they are looking for, be it information or products. Fast-loading sites improve usability, thereby preventing frustration and reducing bounce rates. Users are more likely to stay on your website if it opens immediately.

Secondly, sites should have easy navigation so that people can find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. Simplifying your menu, footer, and layout keeps confusion to a minimum. In addition, it will be easier for users to explore your site – they will begin to spend more time on it.

Thirdly, the goal of updating the site is to make the conversion process as short and clear as possible. Keep it simple to minimize distractions that might prevent the client from completing the desired action.

In most cases, you should only need three steps to get a visitor to take the desired action: for example, buy a product or fill out a contact form.

9. Update your design according to current trends

It is incredibly important to change the design of your website promptly to current trends to maintain its relevance and maintain a high level of digital presence. These updates improve the user experience by applying the latest design principles, optimizing layouts for mobile devices, and providing intuitive navigation.

Following trends when choosing a design not only sets your site apart from its competitors. This approach also reflects the brand’s identity and values, which may change over time. Web design is a strategic investment in both aesthetics and functionality, creating a positive first impression and increasing engagement.

Work closely with professional designers to create a cohesive, user-friendly, and modern website!

10. Use quality visuals

Websites should use high-quality images, videos, graphics, and other visuals that will appeal to the target audience. This is very effective in attracting and holding users’ attention.

Attractive visuals enhance the overall aesthetics of the site. This is also a strategic SEO move to increase engagement and make content easier to digest. User experience is closely related to the effectiveness of search engine optimization. Visual elements are reflected in the overall quality of the website interface.

Clear, high-quality images and attractive graphics help create a professional and reliable online presence that inspires trust among users. Moreover, videos offer a retention rate of 52%. Get creative with the visual elements on your site. Along with images and graphics, it is worth using video.

The main thing is to remember to optimize your images based on image optimization best practices, and your videos based on YouTube SEO. Last but not least, compress your files so they don’t slow down your site’s speed.

11. Get feedback from users

You should actively ask customers and visitors to provide feedback on your site to gain valuable insight into user experience, preferences, and potential pain points. Feedback will help you determine what is working well and what needs improvement. It allows companies to align their online presence with user expectations.

Feedback is especially important when updating a site. It helps identify areas that need improvement and also ensures that changes made will resonate positively with the target audience. By involving customers in the update process, companies can both solve specific problems and improve the overall user experience, ultimately creating a more user-friendly and attractive site.

This collaborative approach to redesign not only fosters a sense of engagement but also increases the likelihood that the redesigned website will meet user needs and contribute to overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.

IS IT NECESSARY TO UPDATE THE SITE?

Updating your website is necessary to keep your company relevant online and improve your search rankings.

About 68% of online purchases begin with search engines. When business owners do not change their websites for a long time, they risk losing their niche to competitors and falling to the bottom of the rankings. Let’s look at the main reasons for updating a web resource.

Updates fix site problems

The obvious reason to update your site is to fix everything that’s wrong with it. It doesn’t matter how well it’s made: at some point, something is bound to break for one reason or another. It is necessary to regularly conduct quality control of the site to promptly find anything that does not work properly, is broken, or reduces usability.

Site updates improve security

Regularly updating your site improves security—both yours and that of your visitors. Over the past year, the total number of cyber-attacks has increased by 358%. Hackers are creating increasingly stealthy and sophisticated malware, increasing the vulnerability of sites and users.

Updating your website by modern security standards is necessary for all companies and is especially important if you collect personal information from customers.

Updates improve your site’s ranking in search results

Search engines like it when sites are updated frequently. They get the signal that you are actively working to improve your content and user experience. If a site is optimized for search engines and constantly improved, it will rise higher in search results, and its visibility on the Internet will increase.

Site updates improve mobile optimization

Almost 60% of all global traffic comes from mobile devices. To achieve high rankings, your web resource must be optimized for smartphones and tablets – this is one of the most important ranking factors. By ignoring mobile devices, you risk reducing your online visibility, which will negatively impact your site’s ability to attract traffic and generate revenue.

Websites adapted for smartphones and tablets look great, load quickly, and function correctly on devices of all shapes and sizes. Consistently updating your site ensures that your site doesn’t fall behind in any of the above areas.

Site updates improve user experience

New trends emerge every day, so information quickly becomes outdated. Website updates ensure that you provide a quality user experience by creating content that your target audience finds valuable.

The effectiveness and relevance of the keys are also extremely inconsistent. Developing a good keyword strategy is very important for search engine optimization. When updating it, you must update the site itself with the innovations.

It is also important to post only accurate and up-to-date information on websites. When it becomes out of date or inaccurate, every effort should be made to correct inaccuracies or update outdated data.

Website updates make a good first impression

In many cases, a potential client’s first impression of a company is formed after visiting its website. Outdated design can cause mistrust and make people think that your brand is behind the times.

If people don’t like what they see or simply have a hard time finding the information they need, they will leave you. An ugly and poorly functioning website leads to the loss of potential customers.

LEARN HOW TO PROPERLY UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE TO CONTINUALLY INCREASE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE!

Knowing how to properly update a website is fundamental to achieving online success and establishing an online presence. Digital marketing is not a one-time event, but an investment that requires ongoing maintenance.

Such maintenance requires deep knowledge and takes a huge amount of time and resources. Web Stage Front End is an agency that will assist you with SEO campaigns.

Our SEO experts are ready to run successful SEO campaigns that will help you attract the amount of organic traffic you desire.

Everyone knows that creating SEO-optimized content from scratch is a very time-consuming and painstaking job. It is much easier for both a novice and an experienced author to update an old text and achieve a similar result in a shorter time.

According to statistics, updating content can increase traffic by 106%. In addition, 90% of professionals agree that this approach is more effective than writing new articles. Let’s find out how updating content can help your business and where to start.

1. INCREASE RANKING AND COMPETITIVENESS IN SEARCH RESULTS

The Google Search Results Page (SERP) is an important factor to consider when updating website content. The better the content satisfies the search queries of users, the higher your resource will rank. It depends on the competitiveness of the site.

Content should contain trending keywords and phrases that are trending right now among your target audience. In addition, SERP factors should be taken into account when updating site content so that the changes meet the expectations of search engine algorithms. By satisfying the above requirements, you will ensure the high competitiveness of the resource and its frequent appearance in the search results.

2. BETTER ALIGNMENT WITH INDUSTRY TRENDS

The number of competitors that you should be wary of in SEO depends on your field of activity. As a rule, the rivalry is especially pronounced in the areas focused on online commerce and SaaS. At the same time, competition is virtually non-existent in retail, freight, and some other industries.

However, the more attention you put on SEO, the more likely your links will pop up at the top of the SERPs. This matters both for B2C companies and in the B2B market – in both cases, it is useful to have a site that ranks well. In addition, updating content in product descriptions, blog posts, or in general on each page will bring your site closer to modern industry standards.

3. INCREASE ENGAGEMENT AND CONVERSION RATES

What happens after your pages start to rank better? As a rule, after SEO optimization, organic traffic and engagement increase. If updating content regularly takes too long, you can always contact the relevant agencies and enlist help in editing and updating pages. Then you, in turn, can focus on customer service and business development, and not on periodic website updates.

For obvious reasons, people will always be more likely to click on SERP links with more recent dates. This is why regular page content updates help your old posts feel new, even if they were created a long time ago. This results in improved conversions, increased revenue, and, most importantly, your authority.

4. HIGHER ROI COMPARED TO CREATING NEW CONTENT

As we have said, creating new content requires more time and research than repurposing existing content with the latest search engine optimization trends. According to the latest data, SEO-optimized content attracts 20 times more clicks than any contextual advertising (PPC). People simply trust organic content more than paid ads.

Thus, you can update the content of the pages on the site, spending only a small part of the resources that would have to be invested in creating posts from scratch. While it’s cheaper and faster than writing new articles, SEO on your site shouldn’t completely replace original content production. You still have to add fresh blog posts and update them just like you would with existing content.

5. INCREASED TRUST AND LEAD LOYALTY

In addition to all of the above, updating old content allows you to build trust and build strong relationships with subscribers. Demonstrate to people who visit your site and buy goods or services from you that you are serious about the content of your site.

SEO optimization of old blog posts and product pages allow you to strengthen the reputation of your brand. Don’t limit yourself to keywords and writing texts: adding new links and multimedia content also brings tangible benefits. In addition, Google’s search algorithm favors frequently updated web pages, so this way you increase your site’s ranking in SERPs.

HOW TO START UPDATING CONTENT FOR SEO

So, now you know how updating content for SEO can help your site rank better. Now let’s figure out where to start. Updating website content is a rather tedious task, but you can seek help from an SEO agency to make your life easier.

Professionals will help optimize the resource, as well as provide recommendations for creating content in the future. You can prepare the necessary information for them to speed up the process. For this:

• conduct a content audit of your site for frequently used keywords and phrases;
• make a list of the titles of all blog articles and check how effectively you use keywords;
• check the spelling in every blog post with a trusted writing service;
• make sure that all internal and external links on the site are working;
• check the alt text and metadata for each blog post and media file.

CONCLUSION

Many companies focus exclusively on original products and rarely update existing content consistently. This is what you should be using. Updating existing posts by adding new information and incorporating current trends will be of great benefit. Conduct a site audit, find SEO bottlenecks, and start updating old content to make the most of all the promotion opportunities that search engines offer.

Are you sure your site is fully mobile-friendly?

Have you heard that Google has introduced a new policy called Mobile First?

Every year more and more people refuse to surf the web on personal computers, preferring to browse sites and make online purchases using mobile devices.

Responsive web design has made it possible to create websites that work equally well on all platforms. Despite this, responsive design is just one of many mobile UX optimization strategies.

If you are looking to really noticeably increase the performance of your resource, then you will have to look at other options.

That is why so much attention is now paid to the creation of the site in accordance with the principle of Mobile First. In other words, your design and content should be optimized for smartphone and tablet users first.

Notwithstanding the above, this article is not about how to develop a new website from scratch. Instead, a number of fundamental web design principles for tablets and smartphones will be covered. We also paid attention to the technical aspects of optimizing the user experience for mobile users.

DEVELOPMENT WITH AN EYE ON MOBILE DEVICES

For decades, the World Wide Web was built primarily to serve personal computer users. The Internet at its best, including cutting-edge technology, looks best on a good, large monitor. But smartphones and other mobile devices have become a part of our daily lives, so it’s time to start adapting websites in accordance with the concept of Mobile First.

What should you pay attention to when developing mobile sites, in addition to the obvious things?

• Prioritization. Available space on the screens of smartphones and tablets is very limited. In addition, content is presented vertically on mobile devices, as opposed to the much wider (horizontal) structure used on personal computers. What elements of the site are most important to your users? How prominent will CTA (call to action) buttons be on smartphone and tablet screens?
• The main thing is content, not beauty. Mobile design allows you to do a lot of interesting things, but not in the way that is customary when developing websites for desktops. First of all, you need to allocate space for content. Make all texts and other useful content accessible and readable. Don’t get too carried away with visual elements when creating a mobile-friendly site.
• Ease of navigation. On a smartphone or tablet, you can’t just return to the home page with one click. Unless, of course, you plan a similar way of navigation in advance. Experiment with Scroll-to-Top widgets (Go To Top button) and add sticky headers whenever possible.

The easiest way to test whether you are doing well is to visit the site from your own smartphone. Carefully analyze which design elements worked better and which should be redesigned.

Whether you’re sitting in a coffee shop or waiting for a flight at an airport, nudge someone on the shoulder and politely ask them to check your site. Listen carefully to feedback. In most cases, you will be surprised at how people perceive your site’s user experience.

RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION: IMAGES, ICONS, AND MORE

Have you ever noticed that you use visuals based on personal preference and not on the rules of UX design? This kind of thing happens quite often. If you’re going to get creative, you need to understand how media optimization works.

Visual elements (photos, illustrations, icons, and videos) account for the bulk of a website’s bandwidth.

There is no single standard for web page size that everyone must conform to. However, it is obvious that the “lighter” a site is, the faster it loads.

How to save extra kilobytes or even megabytes of visual content on the site?

• Resize images. Pretty easy, right? Resizing allows you to reduce the size of an image by 80% of its original size. In addition, on mobile devices, there is no need to use images with a length and width greater than 600-700 pixels.
• Reduce file size by compressing. Compression (optimization) of an image is a reduction in the number of details and colors in a file using special software. You can significantly reduce the size of the images, but they do not suffer in terms of quality.
• Use alternate formats. Everyone knows the JPEG and PNG formats, which have been used for decades. De facto, they have become the standard for images on the web. However, this will soon change. Advanced technologies for transferring digital images have already emerged using the WebP and SVG formats. The latter, for example, is able to automatically scale to fit the screen, thereby reducing the amount of resources required to load visual components.

Optimizing the user experience with Mobile First is a smart approach. When designing spontaneously, you won’t be able to consider the long-term consequences of your decisions. On the other hand, a conscious approach will help you to create a site with mobile users in mind from the very beginning.

Addendum: You don’t have to reuse the same visual components to be Mobile First. Remove a couple of background images and replace them with simple colored backgrounds. It won’t ruin the user experience on smartphones. Try to use all the ways to save even the slightest bit of bandwidth.

PRELOADERS AND LAZY LOADING

Is it really necessary to load all media resources on pages that take a long time to read? Should external pages be rendered before users even visit them?

First, let’s look at preloaders (preloaders). With their help, the page informs the browser about potential navigation opportunities. For example, the user can go to page B from page A.

Preloading the user’s device will render page B before they even click the navigation link on page A.

Keep in mind that preloading doesn’t always work. The final decision is made by the browser. Device type, bandwidth, and other factors are considered on a case-by-case basis.

What types of preloaders are most common?

• prefetch. Such a preloader is used when the next choice for navigation is likely to be a specific URL. If the browser satisfies the request, important page resources are automatically cached. This, in turn, will significantly speed up the loading of the next one.
• prerender. Prefetch only fetches certain resources, while this preloader caches the entire page. All displayed content is stored in the user’s device memory.
• DNS prefetch. All this preloader does is ask the browser to resolve the DNS for the domain ahead of time if you will be connecting to it soon and want to speed up the initial connection. This reduces the time required for navigation.
• preconnect. Works the same as the previous one, but adds additional internet connection negotiation (TCP and TLS).

Here are code examples for different preloaders:

• <link rel=”dns-prefetch” href=”customURL.com”>
• <link rel=”preconnect” href=”customURL.com”>
• <link rel=”prefetch” href=”folder/script.js” as=”script”>
• <link rel=”prerender” href=”customURL.com/preview.html”>

Since preloaders use dynamic HTML tags, you can preload content (like Google Fonts) or create a custom script to preload JavaScript assets in WordPress.

By the way, if you use WordPress, then try WP Rocket – it will help to increase the speed of the site.

Well, you are familiar with the preloaders. It’s time to talk about lazy loading.

What is lazy loading?

When you open a new page, whether it’s a blog post or a regular website, the web browser will fetch all of its content and then offer it up for viewing. Usually, you need to download it completely.

At the same time, lazy loading forces the browser to load (render) content that only enters the visitor’s viewport. In other words, if a page contains large videos or images, they will be displayed only when the browser screen reaches the corresponding part of the site.

Don’t worry about potential SEO issues. The Yoast team has proven that Google renders pages using lazy loading. Moreover, the search engine considers it as a positive signal of improved performance.

We strongly recommend using the Layzr.js library for easy and efficient lazy loading of images. Users can find dozens of other lazy-loading plugins in the public domain.

WEB CACHING

Web caching involves creating a copy of the version of the page on the first visit, which will be shown to the user in the future. If the site visitor tries to access it next time, instead of showing the current version, the server will show the cached one.

The task of any caching method is to speed up the site and optimize its internal resources. Depending on how you’ve implemented caching, you can use triggers to set up custom intervals and other events.

The most popular web caching offerings are Varnish, Squid, and Memcached. However, there are a huge number of other solutions on the market, which is especially true for those who do not use WordPress.

You should also consider using a CDN.

What is a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

The content delivery network provides very fast content delivery using a global cluster of distributed servers. It is able to quickly transfer all popular types of network content, including videos, photos, and JavaScript files. Almost all traffic on the Internet today is transmitted using content delivery networks.

The most important thing to know about a CDN is that it works best on frequently visited sites. In other words, you are unlikely to notice significant improvements if your resource is visited by no more than a couple of thousand people every month. However, a content delivery network is an excellent solution for speeding up site loading, reducing bandwidth costs, increasing content availability, and enhancing security.

If you’ve never worked with a CDN before, you should try Cloudflare, it’s a great learning platform that provides free access.

AMP (ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES)

AMP on Google – mobile optimization on steroids! Essentially, this framework leaves only the bare essentials on the pages to ensure super-fast loading while still keeping the content readable. The speed of the site is very important – how can you refuse the ability to enable almost instantaneous page loading?

On paper it sounds good, but how are things in reality?

AMP is a simple HTML page that can only display certain types of content. The framework allows you to achieve faster loading times and improve overall performance by limiting the work of some scripts and other elements.

JavaScript, for example, doesn’t work with AMP. Of course, only if you are not using the AMP JS library, which can be downloaded from GitHub. She’s pretty helpful. With its help, you can avoid blocking ads. However, if you are after performance, then use the standard AMP.

TEST CHANGES BEFORE MAKING THEM

Nowadays, there is no excuse for not having a separate testing environment (staging environment) for each project. Most cloud hosting platforms provide them by default. Check with your ISP if you have access to such an environment.

What is a testing environment?

The easiest way to answer this question is to take a look at your current running website.
It presents all your code, scripts, and content in real time. The testing environment in this context is a copy of this site. You can call it a duplicate site. In a staging environment, you can make changes or add new features without breaking the main resource.

Here I would like to recall Ashley Harpp’s post “Do not waste time – check changes before making them.”

She believes that we “deceive” ourselves to avoid certain actions – this is a prime example of how people refuse to take responsibility if they make a mistake. However, Ashley’s article has links to useful tools for creating a local staging environment.

Testing is not as scary as it seems. Accidentally deleting the entire database on the main server is what you really need to be afraid of!

CONCLUSION

Optimizing your site for mobile devices is not that difficult. All you need is a little determination and a desire to apply the methods described in this article. Chances are you’re already familiar with things like content caching and lazy loading. Do you use test environments and preloaders?

We hope that this article has provided you with useful information about modern website optimization for mobile devices.

If you are at least superficially familiar with inbound marketing, then you probably know that the first step in any successful strategy is to attract visitors to the site. It is sometimes very difficult to accomplish this task. You already have plenty of other things to worry about, such as finding ways to increase revenue or updating your strategy to keep up with the latest marketing trends. Therefore, this initial step is easy to miss.

However, it must not be forgotten. To keep it at the forefront of your marketing strategy, you must stop thinking that traffic generation is impossible. You don’t need the luck to increase website traffic – just use proven tips that will help you succeed. In this article, we have collected the best ways to drive traffic to your website.

1. Optimize Your Site For People, Not Search Engines

You have definitely heard the term “SEO” (“Search Engine Optimization”). For whom or what exactly do you think the site should be optimized? Let me give you a hint: not for search engines. In fact, the most popular sites are not optimized for search engines, but for the people who use them.

If the page is optimized for users, then search engines will appreciate it. Thus, by designing a site specifically for the people you want to attract to it, you are killing two birds with one stone. It will immediately be optimized for search engines.

Given all of the above, to create a successful website, you should first think not about search engines, but about your target audience. What do your users want to see? What exactly do they need? How can you best help them? Just develop a site optimized for users, and search engines will pull themselves up.

2. Create Content With The Right Keywords

Your keywords act as bridges. Thanks to them, random people can get to your site. But in order for the user to decide to cross the bridge and visit your site, he must be interested in the content that is offered in the search results.

The best way to find out what your audience wants is to create customer personas, as they are a composite of the people you are trying to attract. When creating content, you should choose the right keywords. Focus on the problems your users care about or the goals they hope to achieve. Why? Because people are actively looking for ways to solve these problems. They will find and visit your site if you have content that can be useful to them.

3. Practice Cognitive Fluency

Imagine that you want to find a lawyer who can help you file a patent for your latest invention. You go to Google and type “patent lawyers” into the search bar.

Don’t be in a hurry to hit the search button. First answer: what do you think the websites of these patent lawyers look like? Hard-to-read pages with extravagant fonts, designed in neon colors are unlikely to come to your mind. On the contrary, on the site of a good and reputable patent lawyer, you probably expect to see more subdued tones, elegant fonts, and a list of services that he provides.

Of course, after searching the Internet, you will sooner or later pick up a patent lawyer. Most likely, his page will be close in content to your initial idea of ​​how the site of a respected specialist should look like.

This psychological principle is called “cognitive fluency”: the most visited sites in most cases provide a user experience that meets the expectations of visitors. Such venues offer what people expect to see.

There is an easy way to check if your site meets the rules of cognitive fluency. Ask your regular visitors what they expect to see on a site like yours. What style and decoration do they prefer? What content should receive the most attention? If your site isn’t meeting user expectations, it might be time to consider new optimization strategies.

4. Write Blog Posts On The Most Exciting Topics

You can increase traffic not only with the help of content on the site. Your blog can also be one of the most powerful tools for attracting new visitors. You optimize pages for keywords that your audience cares about. The same should be done with blog posts. What are the most common questions your visitors ask? What problems do they face and what exactly are they looking for on the Internet? These are good topics for your blog posts.

Write relevant texts that answer your audience’s questions using the appropriate keywords. Your site will appear in the search results for these words. As a result, you will be remembered by the user and in the future, he will be able to contact you again for help. This way you build trusting relationships with potential buyers.

5. Create Separate Posts For The Most Relevant Keywords

Your keyword footprint is kind of like a carbon footprint, only online. It is a list of keywords by which your site is ranked by search engines. With it, you can determine how big a mark you left on the Internet. Unlike a carbon footprint, a big keyword footprint is a very good thing! Why? Because its presence indicates that your site ranks high in the SERPs and is associated with many different keywords. Each of these keys gives you additional chances to attract new visitors.

Each written blog entry is considered by search engines as a separate page of the site. With that in mind, you should strive to create quality posts with relevant keywords. The more there are, the higher your chances of appearing in search results. Blog posts help increase the number of keywords and therefore increase the likelihood of attracting a new visitor.

6. Post Regularly On Your Blog

It’s not enough to just blog about keywords that are relevant to your audience. If you want to achieve sustainable traffic growth, you need to constantly post new content.

Companies that publish blog posts daily are almost 70% more likely to report a positive ROI compared to competitors that update their blogs once a month. For you, this means that blogging on a regular basis can bring significant benefits in terms of increasing the number of visitors, leads, and even customers.

Blogging regularly gives search engines a reason to crawl your site regularly. As a result, search engines find, index, and rank your pages more often.

7. Answer Social Media Questions On A Blog

Have you ever seen people asking for advice on Twitter or Facebook? For example, they asked for advice on a place to eat in your city, or they posted a question about which brand of toothpaste is best to buy. How about asking a question on a LinkedIn group you’re a member of? Chances are you’ve seen similar questions… but how often have you answered them?

What would you do if someone asked you the same questions in person? Would they just leave, pretending not to hear? No – you would have answered them! You would provide the interested person with the information they were looking for and serve as a source of information for them.

The same concept can work on social media as well. If some person (and part-time – a potential client) asks for help, do not ignore his comment or question, help him! Try to benefit someone with your highly specialized knowledge. Respond to messages and requests on social networks, but in addition to everything, insert links to relevant pages on your website or blog articles in these answers. That way, leads and prospects get the help they were looking for, and you get a new visitor. This is a very effective tactic if you are not just spamming links to your site, but sending really useful messages.

8. Monitor Relevant Keywords On Social Networks And Join Discussions

You won’t be able to share useful content with potential customers on social media until you know they’re looking for it. That’s why it’s worth monitoring social media to keep track of the keywords that are most important to your business. Find out how you can help the people who use them.

Track mentions of your potential customers’ main concerns across different social networks. If you find such discussions, try to take part in them. Just like you did in the previous scenario when people asked questions. By monitoring top keywords, you’ll be able to contribute your two cents (and content) at the right time and place.

By following these simple rules, you will be able to attract the people you need to your site – your user personas. By luring them to you, sooner or later you will be able to make leads out of them, nurture and turn them into customers. Eventually, they will become promoters of your brand. Remember: the main thing is the right traffic.

If you are at least superficially familiar with inbound marketing, then you probably know that the first step in any successful strategy is to attract visitors to the site. It is sometimes very difficult to accomplish this task. You already have plenty of other things to worry about, such as finding ways to increase revenue or updating your strategy to keep up with the latest marketing trends. Therefore, this initial step is easy to miss.

However, it must not be forgotten. To keep it at the forefront of your marketing strategy, you must stop thinking that traffic generation is impossible. You don’t need the luck to increase website traffic – just use proven tips that will help you succeed. In this article, we have collected the best ways to drive traffic to your website.

1. OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE FOR PEOPLE, NOT SEARCH ENGINES

You have definitely heard the term “SEO” (“Search Engine Optimization”). For whom or what exactly do you think the site should be optimized? Let me give you a hint: not for search engines. In fact, the most popular sites are not optimized for search engines, but for the people who use them.

If the page is optimized for users, then search engines will appreciate it. Thus, by designing a site specifically for the people you want to attract to it, you are killing two birds with one stone. It will immediately be optimized for search engines.

Given all of the above, to create a successful website, you should first think not about search engines, but about your target audience. What do your users want to see? What exactly do they need? How can you best help them? Just develop a site optimized for users, and search engines will pull themselves up.

2. CREATE CONTENT WITH THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

Your keywords act as bridges. Thanks to them, random people can get to your site. But in order for the user to decide to cross the bridge and visit your site, he must be interested in the content that is offered in the search results.

The best way to find out what your audience wants is to create customer personas, as they are a composite of the people you are trying to attract. When creating content, you should choose the right keywords. Focus on the problems your users care about or the goals they hope to achieve. Why? Because people are actively looking for ways to solve these problems. They will find and visit your site if you have content that can be useful to them.

3. PRACTICE COGNITIVE FLUENCY

Imagine that you want to find a lawyer who can help you file a patent for your latest invention. You go to Google and type “patent lawyers” into the search bar.

Don’t be in a hurry to hit the search button. First answer: what do you think the websites of these patent lawyers look like? Hard-to-read pages with extravagant fonts, designed in neon colors are unlikely to come to your mind. On the contrary, on the site of a good and reputable patent lawyer, you probably expect to see more subdued tones, elegant fonts, and a list of services that he provides.

Of course, after searching the Internet, you will sooner or later pick up a patent lawyer. Most likely, his page will be close in content to your initial idea of ​​how the site of a respected specialist should look like.

This psychological principle is called “cognitive fluency”: the most visited sites in most cases provide a user experience that meets the expectations of visitors. Such venues offer what people expect to see.

There is an easy way to check if your site meets the rules of cognitive fluency. Ask your regular visitors what they expect to see on a site like yours. What style and decoration do they prefer? What content should receive the most attention? If your site isn’t meeting user expectations, it might be time to consider new optimization strategies.

4. WRITE BLOG POSTS ON THE MOST EXCITING TOPICS

You can increase traffic not only with the help of content on the site. Your blog can also be one of the most powerful tools for attracting new visitors. You optimize pages for keywords that your audience cares about. The same should be done with blog posts. What are the most common questions your visitors ask? What problems do they face and what exactly are they looking for on the Internet? These are good topics for your blog posts.

Write relevant texts that answer your audience’s questions using the appropriate keywords. Your site will appear in the search results for these words. As a result, you will be remembered by the user and in the future, he will be able to contact you again for help. This way you build trusting relationships with potential buyers.

5. CREATE SEPARATE POSTS FOR THE MOST RELEVANT KEYWORDS

Your keyword footprint is kind of like a carbon footprint, only online. It is a list of keywords by which your site is ranked by search engines. With it, you can determine how big a mark you left on the Internet. Unlike a carbon footprint, a big keyword footprint is a very good thing! Why? Because its presence indicates that your site ranks high in the SERPs and is associated with many different keywords. Each of these keys gives you additional chances to attract new visitors.

Each written blog entry is considered by search engines as a separate page of the site. With that in mind, you should strive to create quality posts with relevant keywords. The more there are, the higher your chances of appearing in search results. Blog posts help increase the number of keywords and therefore increase the likelihood of attracting a new visitor.

6. POST REGULARLY ON YOUR BLOG

It’s not enough to just blog about keywords that are relevant to your audience. If you want to achieve sustainable traffic growth, you need to constantly post new content.

Companies that publish blog posts daily are almost 70% more likely to report a positive ROI compared to competitors that update their blogs once a month. For you, this means that blogging on a regular basis can bring significant benefits in terms of increasing the number of visitors, leads, and even customers.

Blogging regularly gives search engines a reason to crawl your site regularly. As a result, search engines find, index, and rank your pages more often.

7. ANSWER SOCIAL MEDIA QUESTIONS ON A BLOG

Have you ever seen people asking for advice on Twitter or Facebook? For example, they asked for advice on a place to eat in your city or posted a question about which brand of toothpaste is best to buy. How about asking a question on a LinkedIn group you’re a member of? Chances are you’ve seen similar questions… but how often have you answered them?

What would you do if someone asked you the same questions in person? Would they just leave, pretending not to hear? No – you would have answered them! You would provide the interested person with the information they were looking for and serve as a source of information for them.

The same concept can work on social media as well. If some person (and part-time – a potential client) asks for help, do not ignore his comment or question, help him! Try to benefit someone with your highly specialized knowledge. Respond to messages and requests on social networks, but in addition to everything, insert links to relevant pages on your website or blog articles in these answers. That way, leads, and prospects get the help they were looking for, and you get a new visitor. This is a very effective tactic if you are not just spamming links to your site, but sending really useful messages.

8. MONITOR RELEVANT SOCIAL MEDIA KEYS AND JOIN DISCUSSIONS

You won’t be able to share useful content with potential customers on social media until you know they’re looking for it. That’s why it’s worth monitoring social media to keep track of the keywords that are most important to your business. Find out how you can help the people who use them.

Track mentions of your potential customers’ main concerns across different social networks. If you find such discussions, try to take part in them. Just like you did in the previous scenario when people asked questions. By monitoring top keywords, you’ll be able to contribute your two cents (and content) at the right time and place.

By following these simple rules, you will be able to attract the people you need to your site – your user personas. By luring them to you, sooner or later you will be able to make leads out of them, nurture and turn them into customers. Eventually, they will become promoters of your brand. Remember: the main thing is the right traffic.

Are you noticing a high bounce rate on your website?

Are you desperately looking for proven ways to reduce it on your WordPress sites? Then this detailed beginner’s guide is just for you. Bounce rate is one of the most underestimated metrics that affect the overall user experience of your site. It doesn’t matter how great your content is or how attractive your site design is, if your site has more visits to a single page, then conversion rates will suffer. and search rankings. So if you want to tackle the bounce problem on your site, this guide is for you, where you’ll learn everything from bounce rate reduction to effortless bounce rate reduction. You are ready? Let’s start.

Bounce rate: everything you need to know about it

What is a website bounce rate?

It represents the percentage of people who leave (i.e. leave) the same page without going to other pages on your site. It simply means when someone visits your site and leaves it without following any other link (or page). This is called a “bounce” on the site.

How to calculate the bounce rate? Here is the bounce rate formula, and how it is calculated:

Bounce Rate = (Single Page Visit / Total Visits) * 100

Let’s say your website or blog gets 1,000 hits a day and 700 of them were one-page hits (meaning people leave your site without clicking any other links or pages), in which case the rate would be 70%.

How to determine the bounce rate on your site in Google Analytics? Here’s how you can easily find it with Google Analytics. Google Analytics (latest version) itself shows you in the foreground, and if you want to take a closer look at it, you can click on “Audience Overview” and it will instantly show you all the data. Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, you can find a ton of metrics including;

• Number of users
• New Users
• Sessions
• Number of sessions per user
• Average session duration and so on

If you want to know the bounce rate for each individual page of your site, you should go to Google Analytics > Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

You can find the bounce rate on every single page on your site by going to the above location in Google Analytics, which is a great way to work on lowering bounce rates for your most popular posts. If you want to see the bounce rate for a different time period, you can also change the date range in the top right corner.

What is considered a good bounce rate on a website? According to Contentsquare, blogs have bounce rates of 70 to 90%, content sites have bounce rates of 40 to 60%, and service sites have bounce rates of 10 to 30%.

As you can see above, they vary from industry to industry depending on the type of blog you run. More importantly, Neil Patel also created an infographic that shows the average bounce rate by industry. Take a look.

As you can see above, this figure varies from 10% to 90%. Simple landing pages (with one call to action like “add to cart”) typically have the highest bounce rate of 90%, while portals like MSN, Yahoo groups, service sites, or Q& sites like Quora, have a low bounce rate of 10 to 30%. So where does your bounce from the above infographic land? The % bounce below gives an idea (overall).

• Over 90% is very bad
• 70 – 80% – bad
• 50-70% – average
• 30 – 50% – excellent
• 20% or below is most likely a tracking error (or you may have a brand new site)
  That being said, a good bounce rate can be below 50-60% for most sites.

Bounce Rate vs Exit Rate: What’s the Difference?

Bounce rate and exit rate are two important metrics that are most often misunderstood by bloggers and SEOs. There is little difference between these figures. Here is how Google defines both of these terms.

• For all page views, the Exit Rate is the percentage that was last in the session.
• For all sessions that start on a page, the Bounce Rate is the percentage that was the only one of the sessions.
  Simply put,
• Bounce rate is the percentage of single interaction sessions (i.e. visitors leave your site without going to another page).
• Exit Rate is the percentage of exits from the page (i.e. the number of people who leave your site after visiting the page and is compared to the total number of page views).

Exits can be more than a single-page visit, while bounces are always a single-page visit. Here is a great illustration of the ratio of failures and exits by CXL.

As you can see above, a high exit rate does not necessarily mean a high bounce rate (because your website visitors may have landed on the page from somewhere else on your site). In a nutshell, a site’s bounce rate only records “user exits” when users go directly to that page, while a site’s exit rate records all exits.

Benefits of Reducing Bounce Rates on WordPress Sites. Why should you be concerned about reducing bounce rates on your sites? Here are some of the biggest benefits of reducing bounce rates on your site.

• This can increase your website’s overall conversion.
• They will help you increase your stay time (which is also great for ranking up )
• Increases user engagement
• Increases your website’s overall sales (because people who spend more time on your site end up converting most of the time)
• And further down the list

Before diving into the details, you might want to first check if your site is experiencing any of the following issues.

• Slow page loading
• Bad site architecture
• No keyword strategy _
• Thin content on your site
• Mobile responsiveness issues

5 Ways to Improve Your WordPress Bounce Rate in 2023

Now let’s talk about some proven ways to reduce bounces on your site that work like a charm in 2023.

Create highly engaging and informative content

If you have a blog and your bounce rate is too high (over 90%), the first thing you need to analyze is how good the content is. Is your blog content readable? Is it useful for your target audience? Are you creating highly engaging content that keeps your audience on your blog? Or are you just creating mediocre content? If your content is mediocre, you need to fix your content marketing strategy and focus on creating ONLY in-depth articles that add value to your target audience. Here are some proven tips and techniques for creating highly engaging content that will help you greatly reduce bounce rates on your site.

Providing exclusive information. The only way to get online attention for your blog content is to provide exclusive information that no one else in your industry offers to your audience. What is the point of retelling other materials? You cannot stand out from the crowd by creating poor content. You have to create 10 times better content than your competitors if you want to grab the attention of your site’s audience. Only with the help of exclusive content can you make the audience stay on your blog for a long time (and they may look at other pages if they spend more time on your site).

Creating long-form content. Google has started to encourage long-form content as articles with 2000+ words gets higher rankings compared to short articles with 500 words. Deep articles will also help you improve your reading experience, as your readers will be able to get more information. Be sure to create “actionable content” as there is no point in creating 3,000-word articles that readers won’t be able to apply after reading. Your audience needs something to apply after reading your blog articles (or videos) – this is called actionable content and it always works like a charm.

Always spend more time writing great headlines. Whether you know it or not, 8 out of 10 people read your headlines first and then decide whether or not to click on other links on your site. You should always spend more time creating compelling headlines. You can come up with 3 to 5 headlines for each of your posts (so you can choose the best one), and use the headline analysis tools to analyze how strong your headlines are.

Speed ​​up your site

One of the key determinants of your bounce rate is your website loading speed. If it takes a very long time to load (more than 3 seconds), visitors will immediately leave your site and go to other sites with faster loading times. It is so simple. Therefore, be sure to work on optimizing page load times. Here are some practical tips for improving your site’s page load times.

Upgrade to a Faster Hosting: The speed of your website mainly depends on the hosting you choose. We have been using WPX hosting at Bloggers Passion for over 3 years now and are very pleased with the results. Take a look at our website speed.

Install a caching plugin: If you are using WordPress and want to speed up your page loading time, you need to install a caching plugin as it generates static HTML pages of your site and saves them on the hosting server. This way, every time users visit your site, your caching plugin serves up a lighter HTML page instead of processing heavier WordPress PHP scripts, which ultimately results in faster page loads.

Optimize image sizes: On any site, images take up a lot of bandwidth (especially if you use too many images in blog posts or pages). Therefore, in order to speed up page loading, it is necessary to reduce the size of images.

Target the RIGHT keywords (with the right intent)

Do you have a keyword strategy? Not only will keyword research help you get more search traffic but using the right keywords with the right intent can help you reduce bounce rates and increase overall conversions on your site. Take a look at the following illustration to better understand the meaning of the keyword.

As you can see above, there are several types of keyword intent including;

• Informative keywords
• Navigation keywords
• Commercial keywords (also known as transactional or shopping keywords, which are used by people who are ready to make a purchase, for example, keywords: “buy now”, “discount”, “lightning deals”, etc.) The key to increasing user retention is − know what type of keywords you should use for each page (or post) you are going to publish on your site for the best results.

Make your website mobile responsive

Over 90% of people currently use their smartphones and tablets to browse the web, and about 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase using their mobile device in the last 6 months. In the US, 94% of people with smartphones look up local information on their phones. In addition, according to Google, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktops are most likely to be found.

This is why it is so important to have a mobile-friendly website and if your website is not mobile-responsive you will lose a lot of traffic, conversions, and sales to your competitors. If people are browsing your site on mobile phones and if your content or product pages don’t display properly, then they will leave your site immediately.

Use user-friendly internal links

Internal links are extremely important in reducing the number of bounces on your site’s pages, as they help your site’s readers find and navigate to other relevant pages on your site. If you’re writing a blog post without adding internal links, how can anyone find other content (especially the first visitors who read your blog posts)? If you publish posts without adding internal links, it can definitely harm your reading experience and also increase bounce rates.

Three step checklist

We have created the following EXCLUSIVE 3-step checklist for those looking to reduce bounce rates on their WordPress site. Here are two tools you will need;

• Google Analytics (free to use and set up)
• Tools like Crazy Egg (for heatmaps and A/B testing)

Select the page with the highest bounce rate on your site. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 Pareto rule? It says: 80% of your results depend on 20% of your efforts. If your site has higher bounce rates, then there are a few pages that contribute to the 80% bounce rate. Therefore, you need to find pages with a higher bounce rate. We recommend that you first find the top 10 blog posts or pages that send you the most traffic (use Google Analytics).

A Few Quick Tricks on How to Reduce Bounce Rates on Your WordPress Sites

Do you want to know how to reduce the bounce rate on websites? Here are some more simple yet effective tricks to reduce your bounce rate.

• Show related posts at the end. Showing related posts at the end of each blog post is one of the most effective ways to improve your site’s bounce rate. Take a look at our related posts on Bloggers Passion.
• Open external links in new tabs. One of the easiest ways to combat bounce rates on your blog pages is to open external links in new tabs.
• Stop showing excessive ads and limit pop-ups. Both Google and site users hate ads and pop-ups as they provide the worst user experience. They are annoying and also affect page loading times.
• Use excerpts from posts at the home/archive level. Not only do people visit your site from search engines like Google but there is also another source of traffic called “direct traffic” where people visit your site by typing your domain name into the address bar.

Conclusion

Reducing your website bounce rate should be your top priority if you’re not seeing an increase in search traffic. The key here is to focus on improving the overall quality of your blog posts and providing the best possible user experience while browsing your site.

The speed at which your app or site opens is reflected in the first impression users get. This article lists working ways to minimize page load time.

INITIAL DOWNLOAD TIME

The time that passes from the moment a user or client enters your site’s domain name to the moment they see the content is the most important few seconds you have to make a good first impression.

According to Amazon, every 100 milliseconds of delay costs 1% of sales.

And yet, many web developers treat download speed as something of secondary concern. They add more and more libraries and features and gradually start to notice a drop in conversions. Worst of all, these losses are hard to detect—users leave slow-loading pages before the site has time to store any metrics.

Some of the methods below can be implemented on the front end and some on the back end. Either way, web applications should load quickly.

1. USE THE RIGHT METRICS

The first thing you need to do is add metrics. The boot process has many steps, and you won’t know where the bottleneck is until you start monitoring the right parameters.

Below are the most important steps in the download process.

In other words, you must track the metrics for each segment of this chart.

Let’s look at how this can be done.

Time from browser request to response

Track this indicator on your server. You need to determine the time from the moment your API receives a request to the time it issues a response. Depending on whether external calls are made to, for example, databases, there may be a minor or a significant bottleneck here.

Time from sending to receiving a response

This is harder to measure, but one possible way is to add a timestamp when your response leaves your server and compare it to the time on the user’s side at the first possible moment (script tag in the header of the HTML page).

Getting a response to the first rendering of content

First Contentful Paint is the time from the moment you navigate to the site until the browser renders the first bit of content from the DOM. It could be something as simple as text, a background, or a loading indicator. You can measure the parameter using Lighthouse in the Chrome Developer Tools.

Time from the first rendering of content to the rendering of the largest element

The largest Contentful Paint is the rendering time of the largest element visible in the user’s viewport. Usually signals the end of the page rendering process when the user sees a full screen. This time can also be found by running Lighthouse.

Drawing the largest element and time to interactivity

Finally, the time to interactivity is the point at which the user can perform actions such as scrolling, clicking, and typing. A high score on this metric is especially troublesome. The user sees a rendered screen in front of him, but cannot do anything contrary to his expectations! This metric can also be measured using Lighthouse.

2. SHORTEN THE CODE

Having received all the necessary metrics, you can start optimizing – you have to look for compromises. With the help of measurements, you will understand which ones are worth going for.

A lot of code can be added to an app before anyone notices the difference in loading speed between it and a blank page. Sometimes it is so small that changes are not noticeable from build to build until one day the site starts to seem slow. You understand that your application is bloated, and this is the moment to go for code reduction.

When shortening the code, you get two speedups at once:

• your application is transferred over the network faster;
• the user’s browser finishes parsing the code faster.

The first acceleration is insignificant. Since requests are compressed over the network, reducing 1 MB of source code in the output can result in a savings of only 10 KB. At the same time, the benefit of faster parsing is much more noticeable. Your users are likely to run your application on a wide variety of browsers and computers, many of which don’t have the processing power to analyze the code quickly enough.

They may also use mobile devices with even less processing power. The difference after optimization can reach several seconds.

Thus, the less code you have, the faster the browser can finish parsing and start running the application. If you want to show the loading screen using Javascript, then it will also need to be processed, which will also take time.

Let’s say you don’t want to cut features or remove them altogether. Luckily, there are some good ways to shorten the code:

• Run it through minifiers . Minifiers make long names short (signUpDarkModeButton becomes ss), remove whitespace, and perform other optimizations to make your code as compact and lossless as possible.
• Import individual functions. Libraries are often chock-full of what you don’t need but packaged in a common package. Let’s say you only need a certain function. Instead of importing the entire library, you can import just the code you need.
• Remove dead code. Sometimes there is code left on the site for debugging or deprecated features that are no longer used. JavaScript offers tools like Webpack that can detect dead code or unused dependencies and automatically remove them from the production build.

3. DIVIDE THE CODE INTO FRAGMENTS

Once you’ve optimized your application, you can move on to shortening the code required for the initial download.

Let’s say 20% of your code is used to work with some application features that users can only get to after a few clicks. Before showing the loading screen, the browser will spend time parsing. Dividing the code into fragments will significantly reduce the time to interactivity.

Skip the confusing import dependency graph for all your Javascript files. Instead, identify areas that are easy to cut. For example, some component loads several heavy libraries. You can isolate it into a separate file and then only import it when the user is ready to interact with it.

Choose a library for lazy loading depending on the framework you are using. No need to go overboard and separate each component – in this case, the user will receive a fast initial load but will have to wait for each subsequent interaction. Find the largest parts of the code that can be segmented and optimize them.

4. USE SERVER-SIDE RENDERING

Since browsers must do heavy code parsing and compilation, and users work on Chromebooks and mobile devices, one common method to reduce load times is to partially outsource this task to servers. In other words, instead of providing a blank page and filling it with data through Javascript, as is the case with most modern single-page applications, you can host an engine of your own (for example, Node.js) and process as much content as possible through it.

Your servers are much faster and more predictable than users’ browsers. Some of the code will still need to be processed on their devices in order for the app to be interactive. However, server-side rendering can fill up a lot of the data. The user will get a page that already displays a loading screen, or at least a progress bar.

And if the data is needed for the initial view, the client does not need to make a separate request to get it, it will already be available for use in the application.

5. COMPRESS ASSETS

It is the assets that bring the page to life. Only after they are rendered will the site appear to be fully loaded. This includes backgrounds, user interface icons, profile pictures, and other files. Oftentimes, assets will shift the layout, causing the page to jump during loading if the user tries to interact with its elements. Sometimes the time of drawing the largest element (LCP) depends on them.

At the same time, assets are one of the heaviest parts of the application. Images can be several megabytes in size, and downloading a large number of icons can easily exceed the browser’s maximum concurrent network request limit, resulting in stuttering.

In most cases, you should not download an image from the Internet and use it in an application without processing. Pictures should be reduced to the smallest possible sizes, depending on how they will be displayed. If the user’s avatar is inserted into a tiny 50px by 50px element without modification, your app will take time to fully load the large image and then scale it down.

In addition, pictures can be compressed depending on their format. At the moment, the web is the preferred option, but compression technology is constantly improving and better alternatives are on the horizon. Given the huge number of different formats, some browsers do not work with the newest ones. Fortunately, they usually allow you to download the files that are supported.

Considering the above, choose the most up-to-date and efficient compression formats, but leave old versions of files as fallbacks, using fallback elements for videos and images.

CONCLUSION

These are the five most effective methods that will allow your customers to load your site at lightning speed. With them, you will improve user experience and conversion rates, as well as increase your ranking in search results, as low load times are good for SEO. 

Fewer people visit your site than before. You have probably already wondered why this is happening. After analyzing dozens of possible reasons, you have not been able to figure out why the number of visitors has greatly decreased and what to do about it. However, do not panic! In this article, we will analyze the TOP 5 factors due to which traffic could drop on a web resource, and we will help to solve this problem. Read the material carefully and take the information into service!

REASONS YOUR WEBSITE HAS LOST TRAFFIC

1. You don’t invest in SEO

If the site is ranked higher in search engines, then the chances of receiving stable traffic will increase many times over. Remember: you cannot optimize an Internet resource once and not do it again. SEO is an ongoing process. You should always support it in order to be one step ahead of the competition.

Google regularly rechecks indexed pages using updated algorithms, so if your project is poorly optimized, traffic will gradually drop. Perhaps the SEO techniques you use are good, but no longer relevant. The search engine often adjusts its algorithms, and you need to keep up with all the innovations.

Think about what you have done over the past six months to optimize the site? If little or nothing, don’t be surprised by low traffic. However, you should not worry, because this situation can be corrected at any time by focusing on SEO promotion.

2. User behavior trends have changed

The decrease in attendance is not always your fault. The reason may not be directly related to the site. Don’t think of search sessions as static and repetitive as internet users get smarter, search engines get better, and even popular keywords change over time.

The culprit for the drop in traffic may be a change in user behavior trends that you have not taken into account. To avoid mistakes in the future, use Google Trends. This service will allow you to understand what changes are happening with keywords and help you optimize your website for them in time. We also recommend that you study the Search Console reports to find out what phrases users use to find your pages.

Perhaps you have never looked at the problem from this angle, but it is quite likely that it leads to a drop in traffic. Try to keep pace with all the changes in order to be out of competition.

3. Poor quality content

Remember the Panda algorithm? When Google introduced it, many sites dropped in search results due to low-quality content. Surely you have heard about this and you know for sure that content is the main thing. But not everyone knows exactly how the search engine ranks it today.

Google tries to provide users with only high-quality content. And the concept of “quality” in the search robot is always changing. First of all, the material should be relevant to the search query and answer visitors’ questions. Gone are the days when you could just stuff your pages with a lot of keywords and get traffic.

To determine the quality of content on an online resource, ask yourself 3 questions:

• Does its content answer the questions that users ask in the search engine?
• Does it solve their problems?
• Is anyone looking for such information today?

If there are more “No” answers than “Yes“, Google will not rank your site higher. Users will not like it, and they will simply exit without finding what they were looking for. And if the content also has a lot of technical errors, then this is doubly bad.

Good and relevant material increases the credibility of the site. If users and the search robot consider that the content of your resource does not meet these qualities, then the traffic will only go down.

Here are three key factors that can keep a site from ranking highly:

1. Lack of content. Google will not promote websites with minimal content to the TOP.
2. Stolen materials. This kind of stuff doesn’t need to be explained. You may have copied someone else’s content by mistake, or you have an unscrupulous person working for you, stealing information from others. Always keep track of what you fill the Internet resource so that it is highly ranked by search engines.
3. Articles with the same titles. If you have articles with the same title, this can negatively affect search rankings. Focus not on the quantity, but on the quality of the published material.

4. You are ignoring the Mobile-First index

Google understands that many users use mobile devices to search for information on the Internet. Therefore, the company introduced the Mobile-First indexing system. What does this mean for you? This means that if your site is poorly optimized for mobile platforms, then it is highly likely that it will not get to the TOP positions. By focusing only on the desktop version of a web resource, you lose the lion’s share of traffic.

5. Slow site loading

Slow site loading = poor user experience (UX). The search robot considers this unacceptable and lowers the resource in the search results. If your pages load slowly, it’s not hard to guess what the user will do: he will close the site and go to a competitor.

Google quickly determines the loading speed of pages and ranks them according to this parameter. Slow loading will lead to the fact that your site will fall in the search results, which is fraught with a complete lack of traffic. For this reason, try to always increase the speed in all possible ways.

Conclusion

Since traffic is influenced by a huge number of factors, study site visitors comprehensively. Do not resort to “quick” strategies that instantly increase traffic, because they can be harmful in the long run.

Learn the root causes of traffic drops and fix the situation organically. This will take a lot of time and effort, but believe me – it will only get better!

If you want to create a modern site that will attract users, it must meet all the requirements and criteria of SEO. Otherwise, you will be wasting your time and energy. An SEO-compliant website is an optimized online project that is well received by search engines. If the site is not available in the SERPs, it will not be visible to your audience, and you will not be able to form a serious user base. Search engines such as Google and Yandex play an important role in attracting visitors. It is unlikely that it will be possible to create a good user base using word of mouth methods alone. You need help from search engines.

To be successful with a website, three main components are needed: good SEO-friendly design, powerful content, and keeping pages up to date. By providing these three factors, you will be able to succeed in promoting your online project. So, if you want to create a website that meets all the requirements of SEO and will rank high in the SERPs, then follow the tips listed below.

1. Make Your Site Compatible With Mobile Devices

Mobile compatibility of a web project is the most important criterion for success in its promotion. Modern users are more demanding on how sites are displayed and work on various devices. If your site doesn’t display well on small screen devices, visitors will leave quickly. Google also considers mobile compatibility as one of the most important ranking criteria.

In addition, search engines take into account the so-called bounce rate – the number of short sessions when a user entered the site and almost immediately left it. If your web project’s bounce rate is quite high, its search engine rankings will drop a lot. If you want to attract new users who browse your site for a long time, ensure it is mobile compatible. Luckily, there are plenty of bootstrap templates that make it easy to create a mobile-friendly version of your site.

2. CREATE THE CORRECT DOMAIN NAME

The domain name of your site must meet several criteria: be easy to remember, read well, convey the essence of your site and business in general. A good domain name must also be SEO-friendly. Choose a short, catchy domain name that can be part of your search terms to get the most visitors. For example, if you’re selling antique furniture, choose a short and catchy domain name that mentions antique furniture. Choosing such a domain is not easy, but if successful, you will significantly improve the SEO performance of your project and make its pages more visible to search engines and Internet users, respectively.

A domain name is a powerful tool that you will use for a long time. Therefore, weigh the pros and cons before choosing the final option. The future of your web project directly depends on the choice of a domain name.

3. USE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

The success of a business depends on more than just the number of visitors to your website. In today’s realities, people can get huge audiences using Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook social media profiles. Create a profile for your business to drive traffic to your website from social channels.

However, creating a page on a social network that will attract a lot of subscribers and followers is not an easy task. You have to create a lot of posts of an individual nature with content addressed to your audience. Don’t use your social media accounts just to post promotional posts, but interact with your audience. By following these guidelines and not resting on your laurels, you will soon form a huge user base.

If you already have social media accounts with a large number of followers, use them to promote your site. This way you will ensure traffic growth, thereby increasing the position of your online project in search results. Traffic and returning users are a great asset to your SEO strategy. By getting high volumes of returning traffic, you will significantly improve your positions in search engines.

4. Create Captions For Images And Video Content

Search engines use bots (web spiders) that crawl the internet looking for new content. They go after every piece of information on your site to update the SERPs. Therefore, you should add captions to your images and videos. These captions should contain key phrases for which your project ranks in the SERPs. Search bots will find the captions and this will affect your site’s rankings. Many web templates offer both visible and invisible captions for images and videos. For example, if you’ve added a photo of a music artist, create a caption containing their name, music album title, and some more detailed information.

The more keywords and useful information contained in signatures, the more SEO-optimized your project will be. Captions for photos and videos are a little trick that may not be visible to site users, but visible to search engines. Using signatures, you can significantly increase the volume of traffic attracted to the site.

5. Always Use The Description, Meta Tag

The description meta tag is the most important tool for successful SEO website promotion. It is well known and often used by all professional webmasters. Optimize your meta tags to get the most out of them to promote your project.

A description is a piece of text displayed under the title of each site on the SERP page. Most often, these are small descriptions, consisting of only 1-2 sentences with conclusions about what content the page contains. You can write a description for the entire site, or for each individual page. Description plays an important role in the promotion of web projects. When compiling meta tags, be guided by the following considerations: they must be accurate, informative, and not contain meaningless phrases. To increase the effectiveness of the description, try to fill it with relevant key phrases.

Think about what exactly your site offers, and write a description with this in mind. For example, if you work as a private photographer, dilute the description with words such as “photos”, “price”, “inexpensive” and others. If you work in the restaurant business, add the names of signature dishes and information about the style of serving them to the description.

There are many ways to create effective description meta tags that will work for your business. A good description will increase the effectiveness of your SEO promotion strategy. To attract the maximum number of visitors to the site, make the description easy to read, understandable and simple.